Panopticism-synopticism as a strategy of social control

Panopticism-synopticism as a strategy of social control Diego Alvarez 10-Nov-2014 Digital Media: Critial Perspectives. Ben Craggs Introduction: “…and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore in order to live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every second of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second, to madness.” (Calvino, 1999, p.43). In this phrase of Italo Calvino’s oeuvre called ‘Difficult Loves’, the main character called Antonino, presents us two scenarios about photography which are extrapolated in two ways of living, however both alternatives have the same goal: shaping the behaviour of the person being photographed. As a result, the behavior is constrained by the omnipresence of the camera because it is always staring at somebody and might take a picture at any second or, in contrast, because the camera is already taking pictures at all moments. Thus, this example can be used as well as a metaphor of a disciplinary society. The aim of this essay is to bring up the idea of a two-way surveillance realm from a top-down hierarchical standpoint (governments, politicians, economic systems and their will to search for crime, terrorism and their prevention) to a bottom-up hierarchy in which regular people agree with this surveillance methods and moreover they want to watch the others. The first part approaches the concept of panopticism in Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) in London while the second part will focus on new ways of surveillance through new technologies in our daily lives. You will never walk alone Jeremy Bentham’s late eighteenth-century design for a panopticon prison relied on an apparatus of blinds on the inspection tower windows to prevent inmates seeing the observer (Whitaker, 1999, p.32). The main idea of the panopticon was to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power…Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at any moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. (Foucault, 1978, p.201) Maybe the easiest example of panopticism would be CCTV in the United Kingdom. In the late twentieth century, the demand for this type of surveillance was primarily triggered by fears of rising crime and public safety. The first major catalyst for the expansion of CCTV in UK came back in 1993 when two ten-year-old boys were caught on video in a shopping mall abducting a toddler whom they finally killed (Norris, 2012, p.252). Nowadays this has become a normalized feature in British daily lives since there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit television cameras in the country, including 750,000 in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and care homes (The Telegraph, 2013). According with this large amount of CCTV spread throughout UK, it should deliver some results regarding crime or terrorism. However, as reported by BBC NEWS (2009), in 2008 only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London. Although these results can lead us to think that surveillance cameras are not reducing crime, it is possible to think that this method of surveillance has a parallel ambition, and that is preventing crime, which leads us again to the panopticon concept. From a potential offender perspective the video camera is the tower in the panopticon that would prevent him to commit any crime, however from the victim perspective the same device would mean feeling safer about becoming a victim of crime (Norris, 2012, p.255). There are underlying parallels between the panopticon and devices such as the surveillance cameras (CCTV), which in this case symbolise the central tower of the prison and its ubiquity. In both cases (offender and victim) the ‘invisible eye’ sees without being seen and consequently alters people behavior voluntarily. Democratizing surveillance The idea of panopticism in digital era is even closer to people as they feel that they are indeed under omnipresent surveillance. This model of surveillance describes more accurately a world characterized by a proliferation of different monitoring networks with varying capabilities for information captured under the control of different entities (Andrejevic, 2012, 93). However there is another phenomenon being carried on simultaneously through the usage of computers and cell phones, etc. If panopticism means in a simple way ‘the few watching the many’, synopticism on the other hand means ‘The many watching the few’ (McCahill, 2012, p.244) but by any means they work in different ways, instead they have developed in intimate fusion with each other. Hence synopticism in a way can have a significant democratizing impact on surveillance processes. A good example of this is WikiLeaks and the Celebgate. The first one allowed public the access to secret information of governments around the world; the second one allowed the public to have access to thousands of private pictures of various celebrities. Both clearly illustrate how the media allows the ‘many’ monitor and control the ‘few’ in the public gaze. Another way to depict the democratization of surveillance is the increasingly use of social media. This facilitates the collection of detailed information about users behaviors. Through social networks people voluntarily and deliberately share opinions, beliefs, tastes and they have never been so visible to companies to gather all this information for their benefits (McCahill, 2012, p.244). Conclusion CCTV is just one example of panopticism, but its true aim is not always to have a record of everything (because it would be impossible to register every single event), it is in contrast, to let us know that it exists just as a reminder of power and thus prevent crime or any other misbehavior. On the other hand, as there are new forms of social networking that have grown in popularity, they might be argued to represent an example of voluntary self-disclosure of personal information to the eyes of the ‘many’, feeding into a recreational form of surveillance which can allow access to information about others. Yet, even seemingly voluntarily, given information may potentially carry risks to privacy and civil liberties. If we are in a public or in a private situation, there is something that is forging our behaviors. From institutions such as a school, hospitals to daily activities such as going to the park, walking on the streets or going to a shopping mall, we are potentially in the public gaze. On the other hand, in our private space, we are also being potentially being watched, sometimes without even realizing that this is happening. In both cases surveillance is shaping our own reality into what Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreality’ (1981) in which the unnatural becomes the natural way to behave in front the ‘invisible eye’. Whether in public, private or networking environments, ubiquitous surveillance is becoming the rule in a world in which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape the proliferating technologies for data storage and the fact that as the collection of information goes somewhere else, it becomes more difficult to have total control over that information. Moreover it is difficult to escape from a self-regulatory condition in which we have not only the invisible eye watching us but we are willingly accepting it.  Bibliography: Andrejevic, M (2012) Cultures of Surveillance. In David, L., Kevin, H. and Kirstie B (eds). Handbook of Surveillance Studies. Routledge International Baudrillard, J (1981) Simulacra and Simulation. Paris: Editions Galilee BBC NEWS (2009) 1000 cameras ‘solve one crime’. [Online] Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8219022.stm [Accessed: 3th November 2014]. Calvino, I. (1999) Difficult Loves. London: Clays Ltd. Foucault, M. 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